Return to Transcripts main page
CNN Newsroom
Boston Public Schools Suspend All In-Person Learning; Cracks Emerge In Troubled White House Coronavirus Task Force; Trump Team Pushes For Foreign Policy Wins In Final Sprint; Parents Of 545 Children Separated At Border Still Missing. Aired 2:30-3p ET
Aired October 21, 2020 - 14:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[14:31:29]
BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: Just in, the city of Boston has suspended all in-person learning citing a surge in new coronavirus cases. Starting tomorrow, all public-school instruction will be remote.
CNN's Bianna Golodryga has the latest.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BIANNA GOLODRYGA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Boston public schools announced today that due to rising COVID-19 cases in the city and in support of efforts to contain the spread, all students will shift to remote learning effective tomorrow.
The city's seven-day average of the COVID-19 positivity test rate was reported at 5.7 percent. That's an increase from 4.5 percent last week.
The bad news is students will remain in remote learning until at least two full weeks of falling infection rates.
The city's mayor, Marty Walsh, saying:
"We have said, all along we will only provide in-person learning for students if the data and public health guidance supports it. This new data shows we are trending in the wrong direction."
This decision, we should say, was also made in consultation with public health officials.
The city's superintendent tweeted this earlier as well:
"I'm disheartened having to close schools to our highest-need students. I often say it's the adults that create for environments where children success. We must do better. Please wear a mask, avoid large gatherings and stay home if sick so we can bring our children back to school."
This comes just one day after the mayor of New York City was citing that there was a low positivity rate. Just 28 positive cases out of 16,000 in New York City that were tested.
So clearly, a case of two cities, one doing relatively well thus far, the other saying the rates are going up too quickly to reopen schools.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
KEILAR: Bianna Golodryga, thanks so much.
Last week, we asked: Where's the White House Coronavirus Task Force?
As an ensemble, they have all but disappeared, even though the virus is surging in America.
Individually, it's not that often we heard from all the members. But in the last few days, there have been some notable appearances, including some where they've contradicted the president.
First, the surgeon general, Jerome Adams. Today, he tweeted out a warning that, "Herd immunity isn't an option, that large numbers of people will die, overwhelm hospitals, and lead to countless complications."
That goes against the dangerous theory pushed by the president's favorite task force member, Dr. Scott Atlas, a theory that the president appears to be embracing.
The surgeon general isn't the only task member pushing back on herd immunity.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ALEX AZAR, HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES SECRETARY: No, that's not our policy. It's a desire through vaccination to get to herd immunity, but it may be an outcome of all those steps. But the desire is reduced cases, reduced cases, reduced hospitalizations, reduced fatalities.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KEILAR: That's Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar.
As the president blames testing for the rapid spread of the virus, Azar highlighted the real reason the U.S. is seeing a surge.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
AZAR: Cases are increasing. We're seeing this happening because we're getting colder weather, and we're losing that natural social distancing that happens from being out of doors.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KEILAR: Azar also responded to the president's indoor event in Ft. Myers, Florida, where he spoke to seniors, who are, of course, the most vulnerable in this pandemic.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) AZAR: I wish everybody there would have worn face coverings and maintained social distance.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KEILAR: We mentioned Atlas, who this weekend completely dismissed masks and their effectiveness at slowing the spread.
[14:35:02]
Well, CNN reports that Dr. Deborah Birx was relieved that Twitter removed the dangerous message because it violated their policy of posting false and harmful information.
"The Washington Post" is reporting that she wants Atlas off the task force, a request she took to the office of Vice President Mike Pence, who has declined to intervene in at least in one recent disagreement, according to "The Post," when Atlas was pushing anti-science.
Another task force member, Dr. Steven Hahn, has recently been successful in bucking the White House's pressure to rush the vaccine process, establishing guidelines to ensure its safety.
And of course, there's Dr. Fauci, the most vocal and blunt member of the task force, and not coincidentally the one most in the president's crosshairs.
Here's what Fauci said about herd immunity.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DR. ANTHONY FAUCI, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF ALLERGY & INFECTIOUS DISEASES: There will be so many people in the community that you can't shelter, that you can't protect, who will get sick and have serious consequences.
This idea that we have the power to protect the vulnerable is total nonsense.
You'll wind up with many more infections of vulnerable people, which will lead to hospitalizations and death.
So I think that we've just got look that square in the eye and say it's nonsense.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KEILAR: Here's what Fauci said about the Trump campaign using a clip of him out of context to insinuate he's endorsing Trump's coronavirus response in a campaign ad.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
FAUCI: I do not and nor will I ever publicly endorse any political candidate. Here I am, they're sticking me right in the middle of a campaign ad, which I thought was outrageous. I was referring to something entirely different. I was referring to
the grueling work of the task force that, god, we were knocking ourselves out seven days a week. I don't think we could have possibly done any more than that.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Did the steam start to come out of your ears?
FAUCI: Oh, it did. Quite frankly, I got really ticked off.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KEILAR: Fauci also speaking out on the president's super-spreader events.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
FAUCI: When I saw that on TV, I said, oh, my goodness, nothing good can come out of that. That's got to be a problem. Sure enough, it turned out to be a super-spreader event.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KEILAR: And here is Dr. Fauci quoting "The Godfather" in response to the president calling him a "disaster" and an "idiot."
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
FAUCI (voice-over): It's like in "The Godfather," nothing personal, strictly business.
(LAUGHTER)
FAUCI: As far I'm concerned --
(LAUGHTER)
FAUCI: -- you know, I just want to do my job and take care of the people in this country. That's all I want to do.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KEILAR: Some members of the task force have said the administration made mistakes.
Dr. Fauci has highlighted early testing failures.
CDC Director, Robert Redfield, admitted this summer that the administration focused on coronavirus coming from China and they missed the threat that Europe posed, allowing the virus to travel from Europe and cause the biggest surges in U.S. cases.
Dr. Birx said the U.S. underestimated how much young people would spread the virus.
But here's what the president said yesterday to the "America This Week" Sinclair TV host. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ERIC BOLLING, SINCLAIR TV HOST, "AMERICA THIS WEEK": Is there anything you think you could have done? If you had a mulligan or a do-over on one aspect of the way you handled it, what would it be?
DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Not much.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KEILAR: Even a friendly host was compelled to ask Trump what he would do differently.
This weekend, on "Meet the Press," Dr. Michael Osterholm, a leading epidemiologist at the University of Minnesota, said, quote, "The next six to 12 weeks are going to be the darkest of the pandemic."
Consider that.
The government's coronavirus response has been a historical failure, one the president appears just fine with repeating.
And with just 13 days to go until Election Day, there's new CNN reporting showing what the Trump administration is focusing on.
Plus, a disturbing claim that parents separated from 545 children at the border are still missing.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[14:43:01]
KEILAR: With just 13 days to go, President Trump is running out of time to shore up support and boost his chances of a second term. With that in mind, his administration is going all in on foreign policy, working hard to secure international victories in this final stretch.
CNN's National Security Correspondent, Vivian Salama, is joining me right now.
Tell us, Vivian, what are the administration's key foreign policy initiatives?
VIVIAN SALAMA, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Hey, Brianna. That's right. Essentially, the Trump administration publicly is going out there, putting on an optimistic face for what's going to happen 13 days from now. But privately, they acknowledge that it's anyone's race.
One of the strategies moving forward in these last couple of weeks has been to really push a few foreign policy initiatives in the hope of maybe grabbing a few undecided voters at the last minutes.
Republicans still traditionally do care about foreign policy issues. It's always been a big issue. In the 2016 race, the battle against ISIS and immigration where some
of the things that President Trump was really pushing towards the end. It really resonated with a lot of his voters.
This time around, a of couple last-minute initiatives. And we have a full screen to show you a couple of them we've talking about.
One of them, he's been talking to Russia, really trying to push through a nuclear deal, an extension of an existing nuclear deal, to be exact, in the weeks to come.
Even though originally he had wanted China to get involved with that, they've completely done away with that notion.
They have also made a lot of concessions in their talks with China, trying to get that last-minute deal before the election.
You also have a couple of last-minute crackdowns on China and other efforts, including trying to push through arms deal with Taiwan, something that really gets under Beijing's skin.
And finally, he also announced just this week that he was looking to take Sudan off the state-sponsored terrorism list.
That's significant. Because we know we've been trying to normalize relations with Israel. We know the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain already did so in the last six to eight weeks.
And now he's trying to get Sudan under the radar right before - right before the election, he's trying to get Sudan in there, too. So he's granted them some concessions as well.
[14:45:05]
Now, Brianna, again, there's so much going on that a lot of viewers would saying, will this even matter. But something like normalizing relations with Israel, that does resonate with a lot of evangelical voters, especially.
And a lot of old, traditional Republicans will actually look to the Russian nuclear talks. A lot of that stuff resonates with them.
They look back to the days of the Cold War. Any effort to sort of scale back and keep Russia in check does resonate with a lot the more traditional Republicans.
So the administration knows it's a long shot but they're hoping those few extra voters that are undecided in these 13 days might come toward Trump in the weeks to come.
KEILAR: Certainly, look, he's got this role that Joe Biden does not have right now. He's an incumbent. So he has some of these levers when it comes to foreign policy.
Vivian Salama, thank you so much. Just in, there is new reporting on first lady Melania Trump's unprecedented absence from the campaign trail as she's recovering from the coronavirus.
Plus, more than 500 children still have not been reunited with their parents after the Trump administration's policy of separating families at the border. The Justice Department saying in a court filing they simply cannot find them.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[14:50:40]
KEILAR: The parents of 545 children separated at the U.S.-Mexico border in 2017 are still missing, according to a court filing from the Justice Department and the American Civil Liberties Union.
These separations happened under a pilot program, so they were excluded from a federal ruling that ordered the families torn apart by the Trump administration's zero-tolerance policy be reunited.
Deputy director of the ACLU Immigrants' Rights Project, Lee Gelernt, who has been leading the litigation, is with us now.
Lee, why has it been so hard to find the parents of these kids. Have they been deported? What are the outcomes for them? Do you even know?
LEE GELERNT, DEPUTY DIRECTOR, IMMIGRANTS' RIGHTS PROJECT, ACLU: Yes, the parents have largely been deported without their children.
There are a couple of reasons why we haven't found these families. The first is the government hid this collection of families from us.
When we initially got an injunction in June of 2018, the government were us there were 2,800 families that had been separated. We contacted all those families.
But subsequently, about seven months later, the government -- we found out not through the government what hid the additional kids from us in the court, but through an HHS watchdog report that there may have been thousands of other children separated right in the beginning of the Trump administration.
We went to court and said, what's going on, we need a list of these families. The court, like us, was astounded that the government had not come forward with these additional separations.
The government was ordered to give us the names of the families. They said they needed two years to give us the names of the families. It's not to find the families. Two years to give us the names of the families because they candidly admitted they didn't keep track of the families.
The court said, no, we're not giving you two years just to give the ACLU the list of the names. You give them on a rolling basis within six months. By the time we got these families, it was very, very late in the day.
That's the first problem.
The second problem is that the information the government gave us, the contact information, was largely stale at that point.
So while we found some families through phone calls, we've had to go on the ground with our partners looking for these families town to town. That's the second problem.
The third problem is we were making some progress with that on-the- ground search and then COVID hit --
KEILAR: Yes.
GELERNT: -- and the search had to be halted for a few months. We are now slowly picking up that search.
But the main problem is the government didn't come forward with all these names. And the court said, of course, these are part of the case. Just because it was a pilot program doesn't mean what you want to call it --
(CROSSTALK)
KEILAR: That's right. These are kids who are not reunited with their parents. And some of them at the time they were separated were babies.
So what kind of difficulty does that create in all of this?
GELERNT: Yes, you're absolutely right to point that out. Many of these children, many were babies, under five years old, many were under 10.
So what the medical community has told us, and what I've seen through the litigation, is that even once they are reunited, they will continue to suffer trauma and that trauma may be irreparable. These children who now feel so scared and vulnerable.
When I talked to the mother of a four-year-old, one of the first families we got united, the mother of the four-year-old keeps asking, are they going to come and take me away again in the middle of the night.
The other problem is, even though we find them and reunite them in the U.S., the Trump administration is still trying to deport the families.
We would hope that, if there's a Biden administration, the Biden administration would say these families have been through horrific, horrific ordeals and we're going to allow them to stay in the country, that we should not compound the horror by deporting them.
KEILAR: Lee Gelernt, thank you so much for coming on to discuss this. We really appreciate it.
GELERNT: Thank you for having me.
[14:54:35]
KEILAR: We have more breaking news. A volunteer in the AstraZeneca vaccine trial has died. But we're told the trial will not stop because of this. We have some new details ahead.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
KEILAR: It is a big night on CNN tomorrow. After a chaotic first debate, a presidential health crisis, a controversial debate cancellation and competing town halls, Joe Biden and Donald Trump face off one last time.
The commission will give each candidate two uninterrupted minutes to get their points across after a question by muting their microphones. The president not happy about that, but he vows to show up.
The final presidential debate is coming and special live coverage starts tomorrow at 7:00 p.m. Eastern.
Our special live coverage continues now with Jake Tapper.
[15:00:03]
JAKE TAPPER, CNN HOST: Welcome to THE LEAD. I'm Jake Tapper.
And we begin with the 2020 LEAD today, quote, "Not much." That's what President Trump said today.
